A California judge has ruled against Oracle in its dispute with HP over support by Oracle software of Intel’s Itanium processors. Oracle plans to appeal the decision.

The court “confirmed the existence of a contract between HP and Oracle that requires Oracle to port its software products to HP’s Itanium-based servers,” HP said in a statement. “We expect Oracle to comply with its contractual obligation as ordered by the Court.”

According to HP, the court has ordered Oracle to port its products to Itanium-based servers by HP without charging the server maker. Oracle is obligated to continue offering its products on the HP platform until HP stops selling it.

In 2010, Oracle and HP reached a settlement in a lawsuit over Oracle’s hiring of HP’s ousted former CEO Mark Hurd. The settlement included a paragraph where the companies agreed to continue their strategic relationship, including Oracle’s continuing to offer its products on HP platforms.

In March 2011, however, Oracle issued a statement that it would discontinue support for Itanium-based products, saying Itanium was nearing the end of its life. Intel followed up with a statement by CEO Paul Otellini restating the company’s firm commitment to “delivering a competitive multi-generational roadmap for HP-UX and other operating system customers that run the Itanium architecture.”

Oracle was not the only software company to drop support for Itanium, nor was it the first. Red Hat dropped its support for the architecture in 2009 and Microsoft stopped building software for the architecture in 2010.

Still, an official agreement is an official agreement, and on Wednesday a judge in Santa Clara ruled that the settlement agreement regarding Oracle’s support for HP platforms included support for Itanium. This is a win for HP and its customers who already have Itanium-based servers in their data centers and who run Oracle applications on them.

Commenting on the judgment, Oracle said nothing in the court’s opinion changed the fact that the company was convinced that Itanium would soon be extinct.

“We know that Oracle did not give up its fundamental right to make platform engineering decisions in the 27 words HP cites from the settlement of an unrelated employment agreement,” Deborah Hellinger, an Oracle spokeswoman, said.  “HP’s argument turns the concept of Silicon Valley ‘partnerships’ upside down.”